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Country Notes [excerpt]

There seems to be something extremely appropriate
in a democratic country like America having a President familiarly known as
“Teddy,” and, according to the Times’ correspondent, that appears to
be the designation commonly applied to Mr. Roosevelt. The same journalist, whose
admirable description is worth anybody’s reading, says that Teddy bids good-bye
to his guest and his coachman with equal cordiality. He quotes “three men in
the crowd,” as Shakespeare would have called them, who probably gave an epitome
of public opinion to the new President. “No,” Number One said, “we prefer him
we know to Teddy, whom we don’t quite know.” Number Two’s remark was: “We forgive
Teddy a great deal for his absolute honesty”; and Number Three chimed in: “I
am thinking that when Teddy’s done with America, it will—maybe—require another
Christopher Columbus to discover what is left of it.”

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Seriously, however, Mr. Roosevelt enters upon
his term of office under auspices very favourable to himself, although clouded
for the time being with the melancholy fate of his predecessor. He is only forty-three
years of age, which is very youthful for the President of a Republic, and one
who has done nothing in public life so far except what he has been praised for.
He is popular with rich and poor alike, and has that “open-airish” temperament
which ought to go down well in a country a great part of which is not yet brought
under cultivation. Mr. Roosevelt is a hunter and an explorer, a student and
literary man, as well as a politician, and as, after all, there is no other
field in which all-round capacity tells so much as in statesmanship, there ought
to be a brilliant future before the new President.